Part 26 (1/2)

Genesis refers to sin that coucheth at the door, or croucheth at the door, and so this was no new thing, but old, so very old, as old as the senseless acts that had given it birth, and the madness that was causing it to mature, and the guilty sorrow-the lonelyache-that would inevitably cause it to devour itself and all within its sight.

On the night that he actually paid for love, the night he physically reached into his wallet and took out two ten dollar bills and gave them to the girl, the creature took full and final shape.

This girl: when ”good girls” talk about ”tramps” they mean this girl and her sisters. But there are no such things as ”tramps” and even the criminal never thinks of himself in those terms. Working-girl, entrepreneur, renderer of services, smarty, someone just getting-along...these are the ways of her thoughts.

She has a family, and she has a past, and she has a face, as well as a place of s.e.x.

But commercialism is the last sinkhole of love, and when it is reached, by paths of desperation and paths of brutalized, misused emotions-all hope is gone. There is no return from being so demeaned save by miracles, and there are no more miracles for the commonest among common men.

As he handed her the money, wondering why in G.o.d's name, why! the beast in the comer by the linen closet took its final shape, and substantiality, reality was its future. It had been called up by a series of contemporary incantations melded out of the sounds of pa.s.sion and the stink of despair. The girl snapped her bra, covered herself with dacron and decorum, and left Paul sitting stunned, inarticulate with terror in the presence of his new roommate.

It stared at him, and though he tried to avert his eyes (screams were useless), he stared back.

”Georgette,” he whispered huskily into the mouthpiece, ”listen...lis, listen to me, w.i.l.l.ya, for Christ's sake...st, stop blabbering for a second, w.i.l.l.ya, just, just SHUT UP FOR ONE G.o.dDAM SECOND! w.i.l.l.ya...” she finally subsided, and his words, no longer forced to slip themselves piecemeal between hers, left standing naked and alone with nothing but silence confronting them, ducked back within him, shy and trembly.

”Well, go on,” he said, reflexively.

She said she had nothing further to say; what was he calling her for, she had to get ready to go out.

”Georgette, I've got, well, I've got this uh this problem, and I had to talk to someone, you were the one I figured would understand, y'see, I've uh-”

She said she didn't know an abortionist, and if he had knocked up one of his b.u.mmy-girls, he could use a G.o.ddam coat-hanger, a rusty coat-hanger, for all she cared.

”No! No, you stupid a.s.s, that isn't anything like what I'm scared about. That isn't it, and who the h.e.l.l do you care who I date, you tramp...you're out on the turf enough for both of us...” and he stopped.

This was how all their arguments had started. From subject to subject, like mountain goats from rock to rock, forgetting the original discussion, veering off to rip and tear with their teeth at each other's trivialities.

”Georgette, please! Listen to me. There's a, there's a thing, some kind of thing living here in the apartment.”

She thought he was crazy, what did he mean?

”I don't know. I don't know what it is.”

Was it like a spider, or a cat, or what?

”It's like a bear, Georgette, only it's something else, I don't know what. It doesn't say anything, just stares at me-”

What was he, cracking up or somed.a.m.nthing? Bears don't talk, except the ones on TV, and what was he, trying to pull off a nut stunt so he wouldn't have to pony up the payments the court set? And why was he calling her in the first place, closing with: I think you're flipping, Paul. I always said you were a whack, and now you're proving it.

Then the phone clicked, and he was alone.

Together.

He looked at it from the corner of his eye as he lit a cigarette. Hunkered down in the far corner of the room, near the linen closet, the huge soft-brown furry thing that had come to watch him, sat silently, paws folded across its ma.s.sive chest. Like some great Kodiak bear, yet totally unlike it in shape, the truncated triangle of its bloated form could not be avoided-by glance or thought. The wild, mad golden discs of its eyes never turned, never flickered, while it watched him.

(This description. Forget it. The creature was nothing like that. Not a thing like that at all.) And he could sense the reproach, even when he had locked himself in the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the tub and ran the hot water till steam had obscured the cabinet mirror over the sink and he could no longer see his own face, the insane light in his eyes so familiar, so similar to the blind stares of the creature in the other room. His thoughts flowed, ran, lavalike, then congealed.

At which point he realized he had never seen the faces of any of the women who had been in the apartment. Not one of them. Faceless, all of them. Not even Georgette's face came to him. None of them.

They were all without expression or recall. He had been to seed with so many angular corpses. The sickness welled up in him, and he knew he had to get out of there, out of the apartment, away from the creature in the corner.

He bolted from the bathroom, gained the front door without breaking stride, caroming off the walls, and was lying back against the closed slab of hardwood, dragging in painful gouts of air before he realized that he could not get away that easily. It would be waiting for him when he got back, whenever he got back.

But he went. There was a bar where they played nothing but Sinatra records, and he absorbed as much maudlin sorrow and self-pity as he could, finally tumbling from the place when the strings and the voice oozed forth:

Night's black agents Come for me.

They know my love's A twisted memory.

There was another place, a beach perhaps, where he stood on the sand, silent within himself, as the gulls wheeled and gibbered across the black sky, kree kree kree, driving him a little more mad, and he dug his naked hands into the sand, hurling great clots of the grainy darkness over his head, trying to kill those rotten, screaming harridans!

And another place, where there were lights that said things, all manner of unintelligible things, neon things, dirty remarks, and he could not read any of them. (In one place he was certain he saw the masked revelers from his dream, and frothing, he fled, quickly.) When he returned, finally, to the apartment, the girl with him swore she wasn't a telescope, but yeah, sure, she'd look at what he had to show her, and she'd ten him what it was. So, trusting her, because she'd said it, he turned the key in the door, and opened it. He reached around the jamb and turned on the light. Yeah, yeah, there he was, there he was, that thing there he was, all right. Uh-huh, there he is, the thing with the staring eyes, there he is.

”Well?” he asked her, almost proudly, pointing.

”Well what?” she replied.

”Well what about him?”

”Who?”

”Him, him, you stupid b.i.t.c.h! Him right there! HIM!”

”Y' know, I think you're outta your mind, Sid.”

”M' name's not Sid, and don't tell me you don't see him, you lying sonofab.i.t.c.h!”

”Say lissen, you said you was Sid, and Sid you're gonna be, and I don't see no G.o.ddam n.o.body there, and if you wanna get laid allright, and if you don't, just say so and we'll have another drink an'

that'll be that!”

He screamed at her, clawing at her face, thrusting her out the door. ”Get out, get outta here, g'wan, get out!” And she was gone, and he was alone again with the creature, who was unperturbed by it all, who sat implacably, softly, waiting for the last tick of time to detach itself and fly free from the fabric of sanity.

They trembled there together in a nervous symbiosis, each deriving something from the other. He was covered with a thin film of horror and despair, a terrible lonelyache that twisted like smoke, thick and black within him. The creature giving love, and he reaping heartache, loneliness.

He was alone in that room, the two of them: himself and that soft-brown, staring menace, the manifestation of his misery.

And he knew, suddenly, what the dream meant. He knew, and kept it to himself, for the meaning of dreams is for the men who dream them, never to be shared, never to be known. He knew who the men in the dreams were, and he knew now why none of them had ever been killed simply by a gun. He knew, diving into the clothes closet, finding the duffle bag full of old Army clothes, finding the chunk of steel that lay at the bottom of that bag. He knew who he was, he knew, he knew, gloriously, jubilantly, and he knew it all, who the creature was, and who Georgette was, and the faces of all the women in the d.a.m.ned world, and all the men in the d.a.m.ned dreams, and the ident.i.ty of the man who had been driving the car who had saved him (and that was the key), and he had it all, right there, right in his hands, ready to be understood.

He went into the bathroom. He was not going to let that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the comer see him succeed. He was going to savor it himself. In the mirror he now saw himself again. He saw the face and it was a good face and a very composed face, and he stared back at himself smiling, saying very softly, ”Why did you have to go away?”

Then he raised the chunk of steel.

”n.o.body, absolutely n.o.body,” he said, holding the huge .45 up to his face, ”has the guts to shoot himself through the eye.”